


Charlie's Secret

by aslytherspuff



Series: The Wish Fulfillment Universe [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, First Meetings, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23451013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aslytherspuff/pseuds/aslytherspuff
Summary: Charlie's POVAUGUST 1994Charlie is at the Quidditch World Cup when he meets his soulmate for the first time.  Fate should not be ignored, even if she had made an error in pairing them.**Part of the Wish Fulfillment Universe**Can be read and understood separately, but you really should read Wish Fulfillment
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Charlie Weasley
Series: The Wish Fulfillment Universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1587355
Comments: 6
Kudos: 195





	Charlie's Secret

**AUGUST 1994**

Charlie ducked out of the crowded tent, making a vague excuse to his mum about needing to handle some work-related business. She tutted and huffed behind him, muttering about 'that boy and his dragons', but he refused to feel guilty. He loved his family, every last one of the red-headed nutters, but they were smothering, overwhelming in their need to _do things together_. He'd been living alone for coming up to three years now, and while his little cabin on the reserve could hardly be considered capacious, he was used to having his own space.

Besides, someone on the reserve had mentioned that the Scamanders would be coming to the World Cup, and he could hardly pass up the opportunity to meet one of the most accomplished magizoologists in the world.

As Charlie ducked through the rows of tents and dodged cauldrons and brooms and flying leprechauns, a brief snatch of conversation froze him in his tracks.

“– the word _dragon_ we could explain, but this –,” a high, feminine voice hissed.

Charlie looked around, but could see no one aside from a horde of goblins taking bets on the outcome of the upcoming match.

A man's voice, this time. “Have an elf fetch your winter robes. I don't wish to attempt to explain the word ' _Scamander_ ' scrawled across my son's skin.”

Charlie's heart stopped in his chest. Someone had the very thing he had just been thinking _written on their skin_.

“Yes, Father.” The voice was quiet; too high-pitched still to be a man's, but too low to be female. When Charlie's Mark had appeared in his third year, he had assumed it was someone older, but perhaps he had been wrong. His hand traced over his ribs through his t-shirt; what did it say? The goblins were paying him no mind, so he chanced a look.

 _Acceptance_.

It was too vague to be useful, and while he knew logically that his Mark would never say 'winter robes', a small part of him had been hoping it did.

The man had obviously left, because the woman began whispering urgently to the boy he assumed must be her son. “The Scamanders are staying in section seven. It's the big red tent next to the Head of the Department for the Care and Control of Magical Creatures. Your father will likely be back within the hour, so go quickly.”

Charlie did not wait to hear the boy's reply. Dodging the goblins, he sprinted towards section seven. When the boy – whoever he was – arrived at the Scamanders' tent, Charlie would be waiting for him.

The Scamanders' large, red tent was conspicuous among the smaller, white tents that surrounded it, but Charlie found that his all consuming desire to meet his childhood hero had been eclipsed by the desire to discover the identity of the boy who might be his soul mate. The boy who's deepest secrets had been written across his own skin for over seven years: acceptance, love, respect, power, and knowledge made frequent appearances on Charlie's burn-scarred ribs. His soul mate was likely a Slytherin or a Ravenclaw. Almost definitely Pureblood and, since they had elves, far richer than Charlie's own family. Charlie's stomach churned, and he suddenly wished he hadn't bothered coming here at all. What would someone like that see in a reckless, poor, Gryffindor dragon-tamer? What could he say to the boy, if he even turned up?

A white-blonde head appeared in Charlie's line of vision, dark robes swirling around a slight figure. The first thing Charlie noticed was that the boy's collar was turned up unnaturally, as if to hide something. The second thing he noticed was the cold sneer on the boy's face. The boy was easily a foot shorter than Charlie, and delicately built, but he looked Charlie up and down with the haughty confidence of a man twice his size.

“Let me guess,” he drawled. “A Weasley?”

Charlie refused to flinch at the disgust in his tone. The blonde in front of him was young, possibly Ron or Ginny's age, and something told him that his ire was nothing but bravado. “Charlie Weasley,” he introduced himself, holding out his hand.

The boy stared at his hand as if it were a vicious dragon, rather than a polite greeting. His own hands remained firmly within his cloak. “Draco Malfoy,” he muttered, his lip curling. If Charlie hadn't been watching him so intently, he would have missed the teen's – _Draco's_ – arm twitch as if his hand wanted to reach up. Instead, his right shoulder raised incrementally towards his neck, just as Charlie felt his own Mark itch slightly.

Without thinking, Charlie stepped towards Draco and reached for his collar, pushing it aside before the boy could move away. There, on his collarbone, was the proof of their destiny – the words _Draco Malfoy_ inked into his porcelain skin.

Draco froze as Charlie's calloused fingers brushed against his Mark, before seeming to remember himself and yanking away violently. “Don't _touch_ me!” he snapped, grey eyes flaring with anger and fear. Charlie had never seen someone that reminded him so strongly of a cornered dragon – absolutely terrified, and all the more dangerous for it.

Charlie forced himself to take a step back. “I'm sorry.”

“You should be,” the boy sneered. “How _dare_ you, you filthy blood traitor.”

Charlie's blood turned to ice in his veins. Fate, it seemed, had made a mistake. “You know what that Mark means as well as I do,” he grit out through clenched teeth, willing the scared teenager to understand that Fate should not be ignored, even if she _had_ made an error in pairing them.

“It means _nothing_ ,” Draco retorted, anger twisting his features into something almost ugly. “And before this World Cup is over, you'll realise why.”

With an angry flourish of his expensive robes, the blonde turned on his heel and stalked off into the crowds, leaving Charlie alone outside the Scamanders' tent.

“H-hello, can I help you?” a soft voice said to his right, and Charlie spun to face it.

There, right in front of him, stood the stooped, greying form of Newt Scamander. The person he had been dreaming of meeting his whole life.

Charlie couldn't force himself to smile, but he held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr Scamander. My name is Charles Weasley. I'm a dragonologist at the Călimani Dragon Reserve in Romania.”

*~*~*~*

“Psst, Bill.”

“What Char?” Bill whispered back, voice thick with sleep.

Charlie hadn't meant to wake him, but the secret burning inside him was too big to ignore. He'd kept it so much to himself for the past seven years, but after today's revelation, he needed to tell someone. He needed his older brother and best friend more now than he ever had before. More now than when he had had to tell Mum about moving to Romania, and she'd thrown the unholiest of tantrums for a week. “I know who my Mark is.”

The silence was suffocating. Bill rolled over in his bunk to face him, the weak moonlight barely illuminating his features as he studied Charlie intently.

“Who is she?” Bill whispered, eventually. He sounded alert, now, but wary. Bill had always been the most intuitive of them all, and he knew Charlie better than anyone. He knew without needing to be told that the fact that Charlie hadn't brought his soulmate to meet the family meant there was something wrong.

Charlie much preferred fighting dragons to discussing the things he'd kept hidden for years, but today's events had forced his hand. “Not she. He.”

“Thank Godric for that,” Bill hissed back, “because we all know you're gay.”

Charlie was stunned into silence for a moment, but when Bill began to laugh quietly, he couldn't help but join in, turning his head to muffle his laugh – more hysterical relief than anything else – in his pillow.

“Should've known I wasn't as subtle as I thought,” he muttered, a little bitterly. Years of agonising had been wasted; he should have realised that Bill knew him far too well to be fooled by flimsy excuses about being too busy with dragons to do anything else.

“Not in the slightest, Char,” Bill replied, quietly, his voice still laced with amusement. “Even mum knows. We've just been waiting for you to bring someone home.”

 _Even Mum?_ For half a second, his heart soared; his family already knew, and they accepted him. He _could_ bring his soulmate home– Reality crashed into him like a stone wall. “Sorry, Bill. I won't be bringing anyone home.”

Above him, he heard Ron shift in his bed. _Dammit._ Ron was the last person he wanted to hear this conversation. Bill seemed to read the panic on his face, and slipped his wand out from under his pillow.

“ _Silencio_ ,” he whispered, before fixing Charlie with a calculating stare.

“It's someone Ron knows, then,” he stated, his voice rising to a normal volume.

Charlie thought about denying it, but there was no sense in lying now. “Yeah,” he whispered, guilt and apprehension churning in his gut.

“Someone I know?”

“I don't think so... But you know the family.” Who was he kidding? _Everyone_ knew the Malfoys. Their name was as good as mud in the Weasley house. Draco's father, Lucius, was a nasty piece of work: a Death Eater who'd bought his way out of Azkaban, and who continued to use his money to push discriminatory creature laws through the Ministry. He knew very little about Draco's mother, Narcissa Malfoy née Black, but he certainly knew _of_ her. His best friend from Hogwarts, Tonks, was her estranged niece. The names Black and Malfoy had been considered taboo in the Tonks household, and Tonks' mother had held no love for her erstwhile sister.

Bill raised an eyebrow. “From school?” he guessed. “Perhaps a Dark family?”

“No ...and yes,” Charlie admitted, the air leaving his lungs in a rush. “The Malfoys.”

Bill was silent for what felt like hours, Charlie's revelation hanging in the air between them.

“Fuck,” his brother whispered, eventually. “Your soulmate is the little Malfoy heir?”

Charlie nodded. “Draco. I met him today.”

“The fates gave you your very own dragon,” Bill muttered, trying desperately to lighten the mood.

Neither of them laughed.

“He called me a blood traitor.”

“Fuck.”

*~*~*~*

The next morning, Charlie pulled Ron aside after breakfast. He knew Ron had overheard at least part of his conversation with Bill last night, and he didn't want his youngest brother mentioning it to the family or, worse still, figuring out who his Mark was.

“Look, Ron,” he said, quietly, “please don't tell anyone what you heard last night.”

His brother looked vaguely offended at the suggestion and shook his head, his hand reaching for his own Mark. It was a subconscious gesture Ron had developed early in life, one that would give him away one of these days. Especially if Ron's Mark was who Charlie was growing to suspect it was. He tilted his head towards Ron's arm.

“When you work out who it is, owl me, okay?”

Ron nodded, still looking somewhat perturbed by the whole conversation.

Ignoring his confusion, Charlie pulled him in for a hug, feeling the desperate need to reassure his younger brother, though Ron, of course, had no idea why. Despite that, Ron clung to him like he had when he was younger, and for a brief moment, Charlie regretted missing so much of Ron's life.

“I'm sorry,” Ron whispered as his arms tightened around Charlie's broad shoulders.

“Don't be,” he replied. There was nothing Ron could do; Fate had simply made a mistake with his Mark. “But don't forget, I'm always here if you need me.”

Fate, Charlie was increasingly sure, had _not_ made a mistake with Ron's Mark.

Ron had just pulled back from the hug, a questioning expression on his face, when a dark-haired boy bounded up and grabbed his hand. Just like that, Ron seemed to forget Charlie's entire existence, completely entranced by Harry's bright-eyed enthusiasm. Charlie watched as the two, grinning boys darted out of the tent, hand in hand.

“Cute, aren't they?”

Charlie turned to his older brother, a bittersweet smile on his lips. “Yeah, they are. At least he's luckier than me, even if he is completely oblivious.”

Bill smiled sadly. “Fate knows what she's doing, Char. Give her a chance.”

Silently, Charlie disagreed, but he nodded anyway.

That night, he realised exactly what Draco had meant when he'd said that Charlie would soon understand why their Marks meant nothing. Draco was destined to take an altogether different kind of mark, one that would put them on opposite sides of what could be a very bloody war. But, even as he accepted that, he knew he would love his soulmate regardless. What else _could_ he do, but love the man whose deepest secrets lay bare across his skin.


End file.
